For #2:
Tonight you see in sepia tone as the streetlights stand isolated from the neon and movement of the city. The avenue of Old Town thins — strangers have their backs towards you, so this is the occasion to cross the street, alone and unrecognized.
From the park strip to the sidewalk cast under the shadow of the public library, there is a prevailing slick, sophisticated blackness about this evening. The glow overhead hints at churning clouds under the cover. The air is thick and everything towers over you. The library has lost its familiarity in the dark like the road itself. The building becomes a mausoleum as the antiquity of the avenue coalesces with this newfound foreignness. The trees you crossed from transition like claws latched into the heavy obscurity of the sky. You swear, against the distanced sound of traffic, there is a murmur of thunder.
It is all very "cinema," adventuring (as you would define it) in the manner that you are, and then coming full-circle to the street you believed you knew best. There is an enrapturing thrill about your circumstances this starless morning. Your shaking breaths escape you, and you fantasize them as drafts off a cigar. You, the grizzled PI, standing at the street corner, recounting on the days before the case.
The cold is anxious and infectious. You pat the wound beneath your coat with stressed insouciance. You're waiting, lurking in the shadows; you're an action hero, now, something of a cowl, a total badass. You know this city. You're not scared.
